And he swept from my presence, followed by his suite. And last of all by the Princess Lilla, who turned and smiled sweetly on me, just as she was leaving.
No further word came from the palace all that day, but late that afternoon Prince Yuri visited the jail with a number of his courtiers. He was furiously angry. Poblath was with him, endeavoring to calm him down and to divert him from seeing me, but Yuri was insistent.
As the door of my cell was flung open, the prince started to abuse me.
“How dare you malign a member of the ruling house?” he thundered. “How dare you lie, and involve the Princess Lilla in your lies? I have a mind to kill you on the spot, and thus rid the planet of your foul presence.”
And he would have gone on if I had not had a sudden inspiration.
“Yuri,” said I, “you woofus, brink, mathlab! I’ll—get—your number!”
The effect was electrical. The prince’s face went white with rage. Then he calmed, and a smile overspread his face.
“Pardon me, sir, but I’ll get yours,” he replied with a low bow.
Poblath interjected: “You poor fool, Cabot! Prince Yuri is the best duelist in all Cupia.”
“‘A brink may hop once too often beneath the kerkool,’” I quoted. “But come, I see that we do not rush at each other as they do in Formia. What are supposed to be the formalities here?”
“You will learn soon enough,” Yuri growled, scowling ominously.
But Poblath more kindly explained: “Each of you chooses an attendant, and then the attendants tie you together, and you kill with knives.”
This reminded me of Mark Twain’s “Gatling guns at fifteen paces.” I chose Poblath, and Yuri chose one of his own suite. A peculiar harness was then produced, consisting of a double belt. One half of this was buckled around Yuri’s waist; but when they came to buckle me into the other half, my radio apparatus, which was concealed beneath my toga, furnished an obstacle, and so there was nothing for me to do but take it off. This, of course, would render me entirely deaf during the fight, which fact might prove somewhat disadvantageous.
But before they took away my hearing they explained fully to me just how the duel would be conducted. And I cautioned Poblath to keep a firm hold of my apparatus and not let it get into the hands of any of Yuri’s henchmen even for an instant.